Quotes from The Player of Games

“All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elefant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains makkeable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of the rules. Generally, all the best mechanistic games - those which can be played in any sense "perfectly", such as a grid, Prallian scope, 'nkraytle, chess, Farnic dimensions - can be traced to civilisations lacking a realistic view of the universe (let alone the reality). They are also, I might add, invariably pre-machine-sentience societies.

The very first-rank games acknowledge the element of chance, even if they rightly restrict raw luck. To attempt to construct a game on any other lines, no matter how complicated and subtle the rules are, and regardless of the scale and differentiation of the playing volume and the variety of the powers and attibutes of the pieces, is inevitably to schackle oneself to a conspectus which is not merely socially but techno-philosophically lagging several ages behind our own. As a historical exercise it might have some value, As a work of the intellect, it's just a waste of time. If you want to make something old-fashioned, why not build a wooden sailing boat, or a steam engine? They're just as complicated and demanding as a mechanistic game, and you'll keep fit at the same time.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it,”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Why had he done it? Why couldn't it just not have happened? Why didn't they have time-travel, why couldn't he go back and stop it happening? Ships that could circumnavigate the galaxy in a few years, and count every cell in your body from light-years off, but he wasn't able to go back one miserable day and alter one tiny, stupid, idiotic, shameful decision...”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Escape is a commodity like anything else”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of the rules.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving behind their terminal. It was a conventional opening, the equivalent of straying off the path in the wild woods in one age, or a car breaking down at night on a lonely road in another.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“But what if someone kills somebody else?"
Gurgeh shrugged. "They're slap-droned."
"Ah! This sounds more like it. What does that drone do?"
"Follows you around and makes sure you never do it again."
"Is that all?"
"What more do you want? Social death, Hamin; you don't get invited to too many parties."
"Ah; but in your Culture, can't you gatecrash?"
"I suppose so," Gurgeh conceded. "But nobody'd talk to you.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“It is especially important to remember that the ownership of humans is possible too; not in terms of actual slavery, which they are proud to have abolished, but in the sense that, according to which sex and class one belongs to, one may be partially owned by another or others by having to sell one's labour or talents to somebody with the means to buy them. In the case of males, they give themselves most totally when they become soldiers; the personnel in their armed forces are like slaves, with little personal freedom, and under threat of death if they disobey. Females sell their bodies, usually, entering into the legal contract of "marriage" to Intermediates, who then pay them for their sexual favours by-”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Common misconception that; that fun is relaxing. If it is, you’re not doing it right.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Jernau Gurgeh,” the machine said, making a sighing noise, “a guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it.” Gurgeh thought about this. “Can I lie?”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“There's something very... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You've never changed sex, have you?' He shook his head. 'Or slept with a man?' Another shake. 'I thought so,' Yay said. 'You're strange, Gurgeh.' She drained her glass.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Does identity matter anyway? I have my doubts. We are what we do, not what we think. Only the interactions count (there is no problem with free will here; that’s not incompatible with believing your actions define you). And what is free will anyway? Chance. The random factor. If one is not ultimately predictable, then of course that’s all it can be.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“A guilty system recognizes no innocents.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Because I do enjoy winning, because I do have something nobody can copy, something nobody else can have; I’m me; I’m one of the best.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“The set-up assumes that the game and life are the same thing, and such is the pervasive nature of the idea of the game within the society that just by believing that, they make it so.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“You could find out most things, if you knew the right questions to ask. Even if you didn’t, you could still find out a lot.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“...for all its apparent speed, the ship was almost perfectly silent, and he experienced an enervating, eerie feeling, as though the ancient warship, mothballed all those centuries, had somehow not yet fully woken up, and events within its sleek hull still moved to another, slower tempo, made half of dreams.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“What, anyway, was he to say? That intelligence could surpass and excel the blind force of evolution, with its emphasis on mutation, struggle and death? That conscious cooperation was more efficient than feral competition?”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“His jaw was slack and his mouth open, and he wondered if perhaps he would drown eventually; drowned by the falling rain.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“individual is obsolete. That’s why life is so comfortable for us all. We don’t matter, so we’re safe. No one person can have any real effect anymore.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“It was not so difficult to understand the warped view the Azadians had of what they called "human nature" - the phrase they used whenever they had to justify something inhuman and unnatural”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority — a majority, mark you; not all — of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“conscious cooperation was more efficient than feral competition?”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“Vos vaisseaux se croient intelligents et conscients ! gloussa Hamin.
C'est aussi une erreur assez communément répandue parmi certains de nos compatriotes humains.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“It was rude, insulting and frequently infuriating, but it made such a refreshing change from the awful politeness of most people.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“though. Our Azadian friends are always rather nonplussed by our lack of a flag or a symbol, and the Culture rep here—you’ll meet him tonight if he remembers to turn up—thought it was a pity there was no Culture anthem for bands to play when our people come here, so he whistled them the first song that came into his head, and they’ve been playing that at receptions and ceremonies for the last eight years.” “I thought I recognized one of the tunes they played,” Gurgeh admitted. The drone pushed his arms up and made some more adjustments. “Yes, but the first song that came into the guy’s head was ‘Lick Me Out’; have you heard the lyrics?” “Ah.” Gurgeh grinned. “That song. Yes, that could be awkward.” “Damn right. If they find out they’ll probably declare war. Usual Contact snafu.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“now he realized… now he knew why the Empire had survived because of the game; Azad itself simply produced an insatiable desire for more victories, more power, more territory, more dominance…”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“I had high hopes for that girl, but too much of that sort of nonsense and I think her intelligence will explosively dismantle”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

“This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called “Gurgeh.” The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Player of Games

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